Considering the city can’t even figure out what to do with its own building, why would anyone believe the same administration can put together a credible budget for a future run at hosting the Winter Olympics?

About a dozen or so years ago, I remember taking a tour of the refurbished Old City Hall in which folks (then called aldermen) seemed as proud as peacocks with their updated digs.

Certainly, the lovely sandstone building adjacent to that more soulless, though much larger municipal building at the heart of downtown in which administrators occasionally toil, seemed a wonderful and appropriate home for civic governance in a city that once upon a time couldn’t wait to tear down such historic edifices and replace them with glass and wallboard monstrosities.

But of course it didn’t work out quite as planned. By 2016, the 14 people (by now preferring the term councillors) along with the mayor had to move a hundred yards to the east and settle into office space in the maw of the much larger municipal headquarters. This was supposed to be temporary, while renovations to the historic city hall were carried out.

(Some might wonder why the renovations to the outside of the building didn’t take place at the same time the innards were given a make over, but those folk obviously have never worked for any governmental agency.)

But now, after a few years in these temporary digs up on the fourth floor, it seems some councillors feel very much at home — apparently there’s more office space for the larger staffs they’ve taken aboard in the past few years. So now administration is looking at the implications if councillors were actually to stay put.

Now, unless you’ve just arrived this past weekend, you will not be surprised to learn there would be cost implications if this “we shall not be moved (again)” movement holds sway.

“We have to direct administration to come up with scenarios of which is the best route to go — whether we stay where we’re at or whether we move back,” said Coun. Ray Jones, who has been on council so long, he too could be designated historic.

The original restoration price tag was $34 million, but now councillors have become used to the extra leg room for them and their recently hired buddies, moving back into the historic building might require further unplanned and therefore unbudgeted renovation work, such as taking over additional office space.

“There’s going to be a cost implication either way. It’s not in the budget right now — the $34 million was to repair city hall and move us out and move us back in,” explained Jones.

Municipal Building in downtown Calgary, where councillors currently have offices.Jim Wells, Postmedia

Yet if the councillors decide to stay in the bigger building, what the heck happens to the Old City Hall that we’re now spending $34 million to redo? Perhaps a permanent exhibit showcasing examples of civic frugality down the decades? At least that won’t require extra space.

Meanwhile, the mayor reckons it’s likely everyone, including himself, will eventually be back in the old building once the renovation work to the sandstone exterior is complete in a couple of years.

“I . . . want to make sure that building isn’t just a dusty museum. That it’s really the home of democracy in Calgary. That’s why we’re spending all the money renovating it,” he explained.

Yes, the home of civic democracy indeed — a building not only known to all who toil at the municipal building mere yards away, but one actually used for years by the councillors themselves. Yet its future and the renovation budget, agreed upon only a few years ago, are in doubt.

So if that’s proving difficult, is it any wonder the cynical among us question the validity and likely permanence of the suggested $4.6-billion Olympic price tag to host a massive, global event in our city a long and unpredictable eight years from now.

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